April5

Porting GatherContent API sites into OpenCms

By: Kelvin Gan

We are currently using GatherContent for some of our projects. It allows our Content Team to focus on (ahem!) gathering content and stores it in a structured manner. I won't really talk about that aspect of GatherContent as that is probably worth another blog post on its own. I will instead outline what I did to get a piece of content out of the GatherContent API, converting it into XML and uploading it into our CMS (OpenCms) for editing.

You sign up for an API key for your GatherContent user account. The access you have depends on your account. So as I have access to all of our projects, my API key can pull data on all of them too.

I wrote some code in PHP (with some unit tests! Yay) that pulls out a particular page from one of our projects. The code takes the data for that page and constructs an XML file and the schema matches a custom XML type that we have in our test CMS. This is a proof of concept for us to see if we can port our content into our CMS from GatherContent.

Running unit tests against GatherContent API to generate an example XML file

Running unit tests against GatherContent API to generate an example XML file

Once the tests have run the XML file is written to disk (I know that tests should clean up but this is just for demonstration purposes).

XML file generated for page from GatherContent

I've given the XML file a file extension of .gathercontent and for our test CMS I've given it a mime-type mapping that treats these as XML.

    <type class="org.OpenCms.file.types.CmsResourceTypeXmlContent" name="xmlcontent" id="7">
        <mappings>
            <mapping suffix=".gathercontent" />
        </mappings>
    </type>

So as I upload this file into our CMS, it knows what to do with it.

Upload of gathercontent file into OpenCms

Along with that, the XML file has a schema declaration:

<GatherContentPage
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="OpenCms://sites/bath/_admin/schemas/gatherContentPage.xsd"
>
...

So there's a XSD file already for it. This schema definition means that when I hit Edit the CMS knows what the structure of the content is and gives me the editors for each region of content.

Editing a page from GatherContent in OpenCms

You can see from this how we can move to being able to port a whole site's worth of pages from GatherContent, rather than the solitary one in this demo, into our CMS in just a few more steps.

We're pleased that GatherContent have given us access to our content via their API and hope to make much more use of it soon.

Posted in: Communication1 comments

February5

Experiencing student experience

By: Carol Price

I recently started a web editor job focusing on first-year student experience. So what exactly does ‘student experience’ mean and why is it so important?

What is student experience?

Student experience is broadly defined as ‘all aspects of student life’. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

Why is student experience important?

That’s easy too: universities are focusing on student experience in response to an increasingly competitive market with a more informed, demanding and diverse customer base. (Clue: the term was first coined in 1992.)

In today’s funding environment, providing a good student experience is often seen as the key to survival – the best way to increase recruitment and/or retention rates. At the very least, it’s a way to make your university stand out in the crowd.

So what’s the problem?

A good student experience is fundamentally an integrated experience which takes into account academic, social, extra-curricular and all the other elements of being a student – like how easy it is to get a part-time job, or a flat, and how likely you are to get a job at the end of it all.

The problem is, universities just don’t operate that way.

Why it’s not as simple as it sounds

Here are some issues the sector might need to address if it’s serious about improving the student experience:

Should academic and administrative staff have different governing bodies?

It’s noticeable that many reports distinguish between student experience and the ‘student learning experience’, reflecting this division.

Should faculties operate autonomously?

This can mean that students doing different subjects have a radically different experience – in the same institution.

Important aspects of student experience are outside university control

Some, like transport links or shopping facilities, might mean increased involvement in local government, business or community interest groups. Others, like a good social life, have traditionally been the province of the students’ union – the 2012 Times Higher Education student experience survey shows that universities with strong students’ unions tend to perform well generally.

Things have changed since 1992

University engagement with social media has been slow – the sector is nervous about its anarchic nature and reluctant to provide open platforms for existing and potential students. Meanwhile sites such as The Student Room are hugely popular and students’ union Facebook pages and Twitter feeds are often more in tune with the zeitgeist than their institutional counterparts.

The advent of the first UK-based MOOC in 2012 (FutureLearn) may make those universities not yet involved think more about the online learning opportunities and OERs they provide. The fact that the National Student Survey consistently rates The Open University in the top three UK universities is a clue that this might be popular.

What do students really want?

Surveys and research show that academic issues (especially teaching and well-structured courses) are definitely the top concerns, along with social life and extra-curricular activities. But good job prospects (and ensuite accommodation with wifi) are also up there.

The ten top issues raised by University of Bath students for 2012/13 include three that can be categorised as academic (including a demand for more online learning materials); two that relate to pastoral support and four about issues such as accommodation and jobs.

So what’s the other one?

Tellingly it’s about taking student feedback seriously – reflected in recent increased interest in student engagement as a part of student experience.

If taking student experience seriously means giving students more real influence and decision-making powers – as the QAA advocates – universities may have to change more than their organisational structure.

How the web can help

Back to being a web editor – here are some of the ways I think the web can positively enhance the student experience:

Integration

Staffing and responsibilities might be organised in silos but the university’s online presence doesn’t have to be. Websites can provide user-focused, topic-based, information which cuts through jargon and the need to know who deals with what.
(This means integrating online systems too, of course. Students shouldn’t seem to have to access different systems for different tasks – a VLE for lecture notes; a website for news; something else to submit assessments or fill in forms – even if, in practice, they do.)

Personalisation

The best interfaces are customisable. They show students the minimum they need, structured around their status and subject, then allow them to, for example, build their own bookmarks and choose what other information to opt in to.

Portability

Optimising everything for mobile means access to information and functionality when students need it.

Social interaction

Forums, blogs, IMS and social networking sites can help with a vast range of needs from peer mentoring to homesickness to finding a flat.

Feedback/engagement

Polls, forums, wikis and online surveys are all good for promoting engagement. Instant feedback options online can mean that ‘trivial’ operational issues are addressed too.

Co-curricular learning

Students are more diverse than ever: some may have technical, academic, communication or work-related skills that others lack. Optional online activities and resources can help to level out the playing field and give students more confidence and control.

My focus is on the ‘first-year student experience’ – more about those particular needs in my next post. Meanwhile, let me know if you’re working in a similar area and would like to swap success stories (or frustrations).

Posted in: Communication0 comments

November13

Is IE6 really used in China?

By: Phil Wilson

According to Microsoft's own stats, Internet Explorer 6 still accounts for more than 20% of web browser usage within China.

Around a quarter of our 4,500 international students are Chinese (source PDF) and so we've always been really hesistant about switching off support which would affect a demographic which accounts for over 200 people.

But is this concern well-grounded? For several years we've listed IE6 as a browser with 'degraded support', but it's now been more than ten years since it came out - does the usage really justify still accounting for a browser which had existed for 6 years by the time the iPhone was released?

Chinese visits by browser

Chinese visits by browser, August 2012 - November 2012

Google Analytics tells us that over the last three months, IE 6  was used for more than 15% of visits from China - this is 5 percentage points more popular than the highest ranked version of Google Chrome, which sits at just below 10%. The only mobile browser to appear in the top 10 is the iPhone 5's browser, but even this sits at just 5.5%.

As a whole, IE is utterly dominant, and Firefox doesn't appear at all - a very different picture to the one we drew a few months ago when looking at our overall traffic which concluded that IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari take approximately a quarter of the market each.

To answer whether we still need to support IE6 we really need to look at which areas of the site those IE6 users are accessing, but in the meantime this is some interesting food for thought.

Posted in: Development0 comments

November11

How to COPE with Social Media

By: Miles Taylor

UCAS’s recent ‘Social Media in HE’ conference gave some sound advice on how universities can reach out to students, raise their profile and enhance their reputation.

Each speaker had some great insights to share, but as some of their topics overlapped, I’ve grouped ideas together into these overall themes:

  • Make social media part of your content strategy
  • Understand, listen and respond to your audience
  • Let people create and curate, and machines aggregate and syndicate
  • Know what you want to achieve – and how to measure it
  • Take risks. And tweak what works to keep it fresh

    Continue Reading

Posted in: Communication, Events, Marketing0 comments

August23

Front-end developer? Join us!

By: Phil Wilson

We're looking to hire an awesome new front-end developer. Hip to HTML5? Savvy with CSS? Read more about the job!

Applications for this job have now closed.

Posted in: Communication1 comments

July13

Responsive websites are easy

By: Phil Wilson

There is a list being kept of HE websites which are using responsive design techniques to change how their pages appear based on the size of the screen loading them.

I think that this is a waste of time.

Making websites reflow, and changing the design a bit (top nav becomes a dropdown etc.) based on screen size is easy. We could do this in a matter of hours for most of our website, but it wouldn't help with our key aspect: the content.

Quite apart from pages which are over-long or unmaintained being made available on mobile devices, where tolerance for long pages are lower and where the number of average pages viewed per visit is around half that of larger screens, we have the issue of handling content contextually.

There is a great example of what I mean in this writeup, which looks at the Starbucks website as an example. We use methods of breaking up content like those used by Starbucks, but how do we know whether we should be displaying a particular piece of content on a small screen or not? If a page is long by necessity then how do we chunk this so that it is more digestible on a small screen, whilst not incurring a large cost to manage that content?

Responsive websites are easy. Responsive content is hard.

Posted in: Communication3 comments

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